Barbara Boxer spins fictional tale about Condi Rice

Sen. Barbara Boxer came to the Chronicle editorial board today, and I asked her about some controversial remarks she made about then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice not paying “a personal price” in terms of the war in Iraq.

Here is the quote that put Boxer in so much hot water:

Now, the issue is who pays the price, who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, within immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families, and I just want to bring us back to that fact.

Boxer told me:

“I asked her how many people had died and she did not know the answer to that question. And since we had lost a lot of Californians, I was concerned. And I said, you and I don’t have, we haven’t paid a person price, I said, you and I, I said, myself, my grandkids are too young, my husband too old, and as far as I know you don’t have anybody in the war. So I tried to use it to bring us together, but the right-wing press said that I questioned, that I turned on her because she wasn’t married which was a little silly.”

Boxer also said: “I was criticizing the fact that she didn’t know how many people died in Iraq. Absolutely I was.”

There’s just one problem. Boxer never asked Rice how many U.S. troops had died in Iraq when she began her “personal price” remarks. In fact, Boxer had not asked Rice a single question. She was engaged in her usual filibustering.

You can watch the exchange below.

I can see why Boxer would want to believe that she put her foot in her mouth — and somehow it was Rice’s fault, but the tale turns out to be a figment of Barbara Boxer’s self-aggrandizing imagination.